Analgesia

Our team is strongly involved in the scientific and economical regional dynamics. Our University has obtained an I-Site labeling and our team is involved in the Third Challenge of this I-Site proposal. In fact, this challenge is focused on mobility as a key factor for the health. Our team has proposed to contribute by studying the impact of pain on mobility and to appreciate the impact of intestinal microbiota on people wellbeing. We have adapted our future research project to move toward this I-Site project. This in reinforced by several local collaborations we have with other research units. We are greatly helped by regional funding from the Regional council.

Several members of the team were involved in the creation during the past project, of the Analgesia Institute (www.institut-analgesia.org). one of the institute's missions is to help with the clinical validation of  the patents held by our team or in association with the Chemistry School of Clermont-Ferrand. The Institute also aims at establishing, with French colleagues involved in pain management, a strategy to help innovation by developing a large cohort of chronic pain patients. This cohort will allow the characterization and the stratification of patients into subgroups using, among other things, connected medicine, biology, genetics, pharmacology and imaging. This will give us the opportunity to: 1) perform therapeutic trials in well-characterized populations depending on the pathophysiological mechanisms of their pain, 2) identify stringent response criteria for treatment and 3) feed-back basic research in line with our reverse translational research strategy. We have created a “Fondation partenariale” to rise funds needed for developing the Institute (more than 1 800 K€ were already collected). The Analgesia Institute has just completed an important study on pain at work within the IKEA company. After 2 years of preparation, the institute have started the eDOL project based on the improvement of patient management in the pain centers in France. This project benefits from the involvement of a private informatic company specialized in connected health.

OFMA

 
One of the main evolution of the team is the creation of the OFMA ,www.ofma.fr (Observatoire Français des Médicaments Antalgiques / French monitoring centre for analgesic drugs), by Nicolas AUTHIER, involving several french colleagues. OFMA performs pharmacoepidemiological and clinical studies on the use, misuse and complications related to analgesics medicines in the French population. Several articles were already published. These pharmacoepidemiological studies plays a role of proactive vigilance that informs the health authorities in case of identification of emerging signals. They helped the Ministry of Health to analyze notably the impact of prescription opioid used in our country and were included in the recent publication of a national report on use and misuse of opioid analgesic (ANSM, 2019). This initiative has been highlighted in a recent report of the OECD (Adressing problematic opioid use in OECD countries, OECD, 2019) as an interesting example of formal institutional development promoting observational, pharmaco-epidemiological and clinical research studies for improved decision making about the proper use of painkillers. This monitoring center also plays a role in informing health professionals and users about the proper use of analgesics and their associated risks.  Nicolas Authier has obtained several funds from the CHU and from the ANSM to perform such studies.

Local, national and international research teams